A FAST.Farm and MATLAB/Simulink interface for wind farm control design

Increasing the efficiency of wind farms is important for speeding up the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Current wind farm control relies on maximization of power generation of individual turbines. However, research has demonstrated that plant-wide wind farm control could optimize the performance of a wind farm. Wind farm simulation tools are crucial in designing, testing, and validating wind farm controls. FAST.Farm is a recently developed multi-physics engineering tool for modeling wind farm performance by solving the aero-hydro-servoelastic dynamics of each individual turbine. The capabilities of FAST.Farm for control design purposes can be extended through a co-simulation with MATLAB/Simulink. Therefore, a MATLAB/Simulink interface with FAST.Farm has been developed. The creation and operation of this interface are explained in this paper. This interface supports developing and testing advanced closed-loop control at the wind turbine and wind farm levels.A FAST.Farm and MATLAB/Simulink interface for wind farm control designpublishedVersio

New innovative feeding strategy for reduction of Salmonella in swine

Salmonella sp. are a leading cause of gastro-intestinal disease in humans with tens of millions of human cases worldwide every year. Pork is an important food vehicle of Salmonellosis, resulting in fever, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, and occasionally death. Reduction of Salmonella in the feed-to-food chain is key to reduce the number of human Salmonellosis cases. Furthermore, it has frequently been demonstrated that the use of antimicrobial agents in food animals favors the development of resistance among foodborne pathogens like Salmonella spp. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new antibacterial strategies to reduce Salmonellosis, since antimicrobial resistance is on the rise

Dietary strategies as one of the pillars to reduce antibiotic use in swine

The Dutch government and various stakeholders in the industry set a joint target to reduce prophylactic and therapeutic antibiotic use by 70% in 2015 compared to the reference year 2009. The use of anti-microbial growth promoters was already banned in the European Union in 2006. Various biosecurity measures and specific vaccination programs were implemented in the last decade to reduce the risk of animals being exposed to pathogens and to raise the level of disease reistence. These strategies were complemented with dietary measures to improve hygiene of feed and water and to support homeostasis and stability in the gastrointestinal tract contributing to disease resistance and resilience. The Netherlands succeeded in reducing antibiotic use by 58% in swine production in 2015 compared to 2009. Although the target of 70% was not completely reached, it is encouraging that the reduced use of antibiotics resulted in a reduction in anti-microbial resistance (MARAN, 2015)

Effects of Digested Onion Extracts on Intestinal Gene Expression: An Interspecies Comparison Using Different Intestine Models.

Human intestinal tissue samples are barely accessible to study potential health benefits of nutritional compounds. Numbers of animals used in animal trials, however, need to be minimalized. Therefore, we explored the applicability of in vitro (human Caco-2 cells) and ex vivo intestine models (rat precision cut intestine slices and the pig in-situ small intestinal segment perfusion (SISP) technique) to study the effect of food compounds. In vitro digested yellow (YOd) and white onion extracts (WOd) were used as model food compounds and transcriptomics was applied to obtain more insight into which extent mode of actions depend on the model. The three intestine models shared 9,140 genes which were used to compare the responses to digested onions between the models. Unsupervised clustering analysis showed that genes up- or down-regulated by WOd in human Caco-2 cells and rat intestine slices were similarly regulated by YOd, indicating comparable modes of action for the two onion species. Highly variable responses to onion were found in the pig SISP model. By focussing only on genes with significant differential expression, in combination with a fold change > 1.5, 15 genes showed similar onion-induced expression in human Caco-2 cells and rat intestine slices and 2 overlapping genes were found between the human Caco-2 and pig SISP model. Pathway analyses revealed that mainly processes related to oxidative stress, and especially the Keap1-Nrf2 pathway, were affected by onions in all three models. Our data fit with previous in vivo studies showing that the beneficial effects of onions are mostly linked to their antioxidant properties. Taken together, our data indicate that each of the in vitro and ex vivo intestine models used in this study, taking into account their limitations, can be used to determine modes of action of nutritional compounds and can thereby reduce the number of animals used in conventional nutritional intervention studies

A FAST.Farm and MATLAB/Simulink Interface for Wind Farm Control Design

Increasing the efficiency of wind farms is important for speeding up the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Current wind farm control relies on maximization of power generation of individual turbines. However, research has demonstrated that plant-wide wind farm control could optimize the performance of a wind farm. Wind farm simulation tools are crucial in designing, testing, and validating wind farm controllers. Fatigue, Aerodynamics, Structures, and Turbulence Farm tool (FAST.Farm) is a recently developed multi-physics engineering tool for modeling power performance and structural loads by solving the aero-hydro-servoelastic dynamics of each individual turbine within a farm. FAST.Farm aims to balance the need for accurate modeling of the relevant physics while maintaining low computational costs. However, designing controllers in FAST.Farm lacks flexibility and interactivity compared with MATLAB/Simulink. The capabilities of FAST.Farm for control design purposes can be extended through a co-simulation with MATLAB/Simulink. Therefore this thesis presents a FAST.Farm and MATLAB/Simulink interface. Consequently, this interface was used to implement and simulate wind farm controllers in FAST.Farm. FAST.Farm and MATLAB/Simulink are coupled by linking the individual Open Fatigue, Aerodynamics, Structures, and Turbulence tool (OpenFAST) instances in FAST.Farm to MATLAB with the use of an Message Passing Interface (MPI) and MATLAB Executable (MEX) functions. An Active Power Controller (APC) was implemented and simulated in FAST.Farm with the use of this interface. The APC responds to grid requirements through the control of wind farm power output. Comparing FAST.Farm and Simulator fOr Wind Farm Applications (SOWFA) simulation results of the APC shows that FAST.Farm reduces the computation time for a 10-minute simulation from 24 hours to 15 minutes, with little detriment to the accuracy of the simulation results. Although SOWFA remains the preferred validation tool, the FAST.Farm and MATLAB/Simulink interface supports developing and accelerates testing advanced closed-loop control at the wind turbine and wind farm levels.Mechanical Engineering | Systems and Contro

New innovative feeding strategy for reduction of Salmonella in swine

Salmonella sp. are a leading cause of gastro-intestinal disease in humans with tens of millions of human cases worldwide every year. Pork is an important food vehicle of Salmonellosis, resulting in fever, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, and occasionally death. Reduction of Salmonella in the feed-to-food chain is key to reduce the number of human Salmonellosis cases. Furthermore, it has frequently been demonstrated that the use of antimicrobial agents in food animals favors the development of resistance among foodborne pathogens like Salmonella spp. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new antibacterial strategies to reduce Salmonellosis, since antimicrobial resistance is on the rise.</p

Effect of L-glutamic acid N,N-diacetic acid on the availability of dietary zinc in broiler chickens

Chelating agents can be used to improve the nutritional availability of trace minerals within the gastrointestinal tract. This study was conducted to determine the effect of a novel chelating agents, L-glutamic acid N,N-diacetic acid (GLDA), a biodegradable alternative to ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid on the nutritional bioavailability of zinc in broilers. Twelve dietary treatments were allocated to 96 pens in a randomized block design. Pens contained 10 Ross 308 male broilers in a factorial design with 6 incremental zinc levels (40, 45, 50, 60, 80, and 120 ppm of total Zn), with and without inclusion of GLDA (0 and 100 ppm) as respective factors. Experimental diets were supplied from day 7 to 21/22 and serum, liver and tibia Zn content were determined in 3 birds per pen. Growth performance and liver characteristics were not affected by dietary treatments, but both supplemental Zn and GLDA enhanced tibia and serum zinc concentration. The positive effect of GLDA was observed at all levels of the dietary Zn addition. The amount of zinc needed to reach 95% of the asymptotic Zn response was determined using nonlinear regression. When GLDA was included in the diet, based on tibia Zn, the same Zn status was achieved with a 19 ppm smaller Zn dose while based on serum Zn this was 27 ppm less Zn. Dietary GLDA reduces supplemental Zn needs to fulfill nutritional demands as defined by tibia Zn and serum Zn response. Considering the positive effect on the nutritional availability of Zn in broilers, GLDA presents an opportunity as biodegradable additive, to reduce Zn supplementation to livestock and thereby reducing Zn excretion into the environment, while fulfilling the nutrition Zn needs of farmed animals.</p

Dietary strategies as one of the pillars to reduce antibiotic use in swine

The Dutch government and various stakeholders in the industry set a joint target to reduce prophylactic and therapeutic antibiotic use by 70% in 2015 compared to the reference year 2009. The use of anti-microbial growth promoters was already banned in the European Union in 2006. Various biosecurity measures and specific vaccination programs were implemented in the last decade to reduce the risk of animals being exposed to pathogens and to raise the level of disease reistence. These strategies were complemented with dietary measures to improve hygiene of feed and water and to support homeostasis and stability in the gastrointestinal tract contributing to disease resistance and resilience. The Netherlands succeeded in reducing antibiotic use by 58% in swine production in 2015 compared to 2009. Although the target of 70% was not completely reached, it is encouraging that the reduced use of antibiotics resulted in a reduction in anti-microbial resistance (MARAN, 2015).</p